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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29189181">Mountain Lion Mean</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone'>elle_stone</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>elle_stone's troped fics [16]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The 100 (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Western, Angst, Bank Robbery, Exes, Gen, Minor Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 03:26:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,484</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29189181</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus Kane’s body shows up again six months after his disappearance, in the master bedroom of the Kane ranch house, holding a new will in one of its skeletal hands. Arkadia hasn’t seen this much excitement since his stepdaughter was investigated for his murder—the inquiry was dropped, of course, because the body was never found. Now the house, the land, the accounts, the bank stocks, and a previously unknown stockpile of cash in the backyard all belong to Clarke Griffin and her husband.</p><p>Funny how no one knew Clarke was married.</p><p>And now it looks like the bank won’t foreclose on the Blake Family ranch after all.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bellamy Blake &amp; Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake &amp; John Murphy, Bellamy Blake &amp; John Murphy &amp; Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake &amp; Octavia Blake, Minor or Background Relationship(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>elle_stone's troped fics [16]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2255144</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>TROPED Choice: Western</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Mountain Lion Mean</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Happy Troped Choice: Western posting day! For this round, I chose the following:</p><p>Theme: Modern Western<br/>Tropes: bank robbery + awkward silent entrance + gunslinger + guns akimbo </p><p>This fic was <b>heavily</b> influenced by the Neo-Western film Hell or High Water, which I watched right before the trope document opened. It's not a direct au, but the mood and certain aspects of the plot are similar. The title is my favorite line from the movie.</p><p><b>Content warnings</b>: I chose not to use archive warnings because I wasn't sure if this story warranted the "graphic depictions of violence" tag. I think not, but better safe than sorry. As you can see from the tropes, there's a bank robbery and a gunslinger here, and I'll tell you right now that shots ARE fired. </p><p><b>Pairings</b>: You might gather from the summary that this is a Bellarke story, and there is Bellarke content here. But primarily it's a gen fic. For purposes of Most Unique Pairing, I'd like the story to count as (platonic) Bellamy &amp; Murphy &amp; Clarke or, if that dynamic isn't significant enough to qualify, for it not to be entered in that category.</p><p>I experimented a little with a not-quite-omniscient, floating-limited-third-person POV here. So hopefully that reads well and isn't jarring.</p><p>I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies in my depiction of the West, ranches, banks, guns, and the law of trusts and estates (I definitely played fast and loose there), as well as for any plot holes. It's all about the ~~vibes~~ friends.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Marcus Kane's body shows up again in June, skeletal and rotting, six months after his disappearance at the turn of the year. Someone has laid him out, as if for a wake, in the master bedroom of the Kane ranch house. Dressed him up in the fine suit he wore to church every Sunday and crossed his arms over his chest. The suit looks nicer now than the body in it, which is mostly skeleton, or so the rumor goes.</p><p>The press is tipped off before the Sheriff's office, and by the time Diyoza and her men show up, the scene has been trampled by a reporter, two photographers, and Editor-in-Chief Green himself. He assures her there was nothing to see. This isn't the scene of the crime, but the scene of the aftermath of a crime, and if she couldn't find enough evidence in January to nail Clarke Griffin to the wall, she's not going to find any now.</p><p>Later reports suggest Diyoza and Green got into a heated argument in the hallway outside the master bedroom, on the creaking, narrow floorboards just at the top of the narrow steps. Dr. Abby Griffin-Kane picked out the wallpaper in that hallway herself, when she married Marcus Kane back in '06. She put up the framed pictures on the walls, too. Luckily, no one came to blows or even worse, and no one had to write to Abby, wherever she might be, with stories about a dirty brawl breaking out in her home.</p><p>Only about her husband and his moldering bones.</p><p>Most people in town believe Green over Diyoza, that if the body was moved it must have been by the murderer, and if the murderer was smart enough to get away with her crime, she wouldn't be dumb enough to tramp in evidence that could convict her now. No fingerprints on the skeleton or on the nearby furniture. No muddy footprints on the hardwood floors. No eyewitness reports, not even from the nosy neighbors, of strange doings in the empty house in the middle of the night. Might as well have been a ghost that brought the body back, then disappeared again without a trace.</p><p>The paper runs a full front-page article on the discovery, but most of the photos are declared unfit to print. Must have been a disgusting sight, everyone figures, as they reassure each other that they did not want to see. The only picture that does make it in is a closeup of the skeleton's hand, and the sheaf of papers titled <em>Last Will and Testament </em>clutched between his bony fingers.</p><p>The will post-dates the document in the safe behind Kane's desk, the one that his widow pulled out six months ago, in her last official act as the bereaved before she skipped town. Kane left everything to her and she left it all behind, and so the bank accounts have sat untouched and the house empty ever since. Now, some people murmur with approval, perhaps all those riches will go to good use. They grab their copies of the <em>Sun-Times</em> eagerly, where they read reassurances from the Sheriff's office and the local lawyer that the signature does match Kane's loopy scrawl, that the i's have been dotted and the t's all crossed. The general outlines of the document are reproduced there as well. Soon, there’s not a person left in Arkadia who doesn’t know the gist: that everything Kane owned, from the land and the car to the checking accounts and the stock in the bank, has been left to his step-daughter and her husband.</p><p>Two funny things about that.</p><p>Among the assets listed, with the house and the car and the stock, is a suitcase of cash, buried by the tree in the backyard.</p><p>And Clarke Griffin never married, and always swore she never would. But when she shows up to the courthouse to probate the will, she brings her husband with her.</p><p>So speculations of the scene in the Kane master bedroom fade, and the town turns its attention to the excavation in the back yard, and to Clarke Griffin's impassive face as she watches Sheriff Diyoza pull the suitcase from the ground. She counts out the cash in front of the crowd and Clarke doesn't blink. Funny amount in there, given recent events. But Diyoza doesn't mention it, and neither does Clarke.</p><p>Above the yard, a harsh and unforgiving sun beats down from a cloudless sky. Early summer feels like high summer this year. They've been waiting on the rain for quite some time. The tree offers shade to a few, not many, and the townspeople wipe the sweat from their foreheads and otherwise don't move, waiting for Clarke to break, searching for clues of their own. They watch her husband, too. He's always been a quiet type and he's downright stone-silent now, standing beneath the overhanging branches of the tree and holding Clarke's hand, not looking at the crowd or the money in the case, but only the hole that it came out of.</p><p>Everyone figures, mostly to himself, that Diyoza will put it all together eventually. She’s not from here and she has a different view of justice than native-born Arkadians do—that it should come from her, filtered through the Ark County prosecutor, the river of it flowing sedately to convictions, to fines, to jail. She’ll follow the current there with time. But Clarke Griffin will be long gone by then.</p><p>So at the end of the day, what comes out of the affair is this: that the bank doesn't foreclose on the old Blake Ranch after all, and Bellamy keeps earning what he can from his cattle and his sheep, just like the Blakes have been doing out there on the edge of town for many tens of years.</p><p>*</p><p>When Bellamy walks into Raven's bar in the early afternoon of the last Saturday in May, she pours him his usual without him needing to ask. Bellamy is a man of deep-rutted habits and few words. But he does thank her as she slides the glass toward him across the gleaming dark wood. The place is only starting to fill up at this hour, so she plants herself across from him and occupies herself with cleaning glasses, just to keep her hands busy, until he's ready to speak.</p><p>"Thanks for your help with the truck," he says, without preamble, and only after the drink in front of him is half-gone. "What do I owe you for it?"</p><p>"Owe me?" Raven rolls her eyes. She turns away just long enough to hang the latest neatly polished glass on the rack behind her, then throws the dish rag over her shoulder and focuses on him again. "Consider it a favor."</p><p>"Favors can be owed."</p><p>"A gift, then." Her voice drops, losing its usual easy, confident tone for a few words. "For family." Might as well be a favor to her, she might say. Running the bar doesn't give her as much time for fixing cars and machinery anymore, which was her first love. But Bellamy knows that well enough. He just needs a debt that can be easily repaid.</p><p>"Or you could pay double for that drink," she adds, louder this time, and gestures to the glass that Bellamy is turning in slow circles between his fingers.</p><p>He grunts. "For this?" As if asking any price at all were highway robbery. But he smiles, as much as Bellamy ever seems to smile, so she knows he's joking, too.</p><p>The quiet of the bar on a sleepy, hot summer afternoon has a unique quality all its own, a timbre that can't be discerned until it's broken. Arguments will do it, or fights, or even that particular strain of constant, eager gossip that will infect the town in the weeks to come, and change the mood of every bar, restaurant, street corner, and gathering place in Arkadia. So does the roar of a car, muffler busted and driver in a wild mood, driving too fast down the street outside. A hitch in conversation follows, barely discerned, as the patrons wonder who's out there and in such a hurry. But only one man by the window bothers to glance outside.</p><p>Raven looks up, too, when she hears the car stop. If she cranes her head over Bellamy's shoulder, she can make out the door, and through its grimy window she can watch the familiar figure hop out from behind the wheel and approach.</p><p>Murphy slams the door of the bar open with a dramatic crash, then stands there in the doorway waiting to be seen. He always had a flare for showmanship like that. Always wanted to be the center of any room. But the patrons of Raven's bar only pause in their low conversation and look up, watch him for a long moment and don't say a word. Some of them knew he was out and some did not. But Murphy's been coming and going from Arkadia since he was eighteen, so when the moment passes, they simply look away again and continue as they were.</p><p>"Not a warm welcome," Murphy decides, as he tramps loudly across the room and to the bar. "No party? No balloons? No confetti?" He slides onto the stool to Bellamy's left, crosses his arms on the bar and leans forward into Raven's space. "Not even a banner, Reyes?"</p><p>"'Congratulations Murphy, you've served your time'?" she suggests, one eyebrow arched. "'Again'?"</p><p>"Ouch." He puts one hand to his chest, deeply affronted, and frowns. "Right through the heart, Reyes. Right through the heart. You can't even pretend to be happy to see me? It's been two whole years."</p><p>"Two years already?" She smirks. "Time flies."</p><p>Bellamy finishes his drink, sets the glass down with a clink against the bar, and pushes it toward Raven again. The gesture gets Murphy's attention just as much as hers. Impulsively, he slides to the edge of his stool and wraps an arm around Bellamy, squeezing him so tightly that the hug feels as desperate and real as homecoming. He doesn't let go, even when Bellamy reaches out and grabs at Murphy's hand with his hand, knuckles pressing so tightly against knuckles that it hurts.</p><p>"See, that's what I mean, Reyes," Murphy says, as he finally pulls away, slapping Bellamy's back twice in parting as he slides back onto his stool. "Some kind of emotional reunion would be nice."</p><p>"This is emotion," Raven answers. She points at her face, describing an oval in the air around her features. "Annoyance. Your car's a menace to society." She slides Bellamy's now-full glass back to him, then pours a drink for Murphy, too.</p><p>"You love my car."</p><p>"I love a challenge. Not a vehicle I could hear coming all the way from the prison gates."</p><p>"<em>I'm</em> a challenge." He tips his glass toward her, as if in a silent toast, then drinks. "I have that on the authority of more than one judge."</p><p>"Murphy." Raven leans both palms on the top of the bar and stares at him with the same unblinking, uncompromising expression she brings to breaking up brawls and winning Saturday night poker games. "I'm taken. Cut it out."</p><p>Murphy taps his pinky finger slowly against the side of his glass, flicks his gaze back and forth across Raven’s face, searching.</p><p>Then he sighs. "Worst thing about prison," he says shaking his head. "You miss out on all kinds of chances."</p><p>"Hardly." She throws her dish rag at him, and as it hits him in the chest and falls down to his lap, she adds, "What was it this time, again? Another robbery?"</p><p>"Assault." He grins, unrepentant, and tosses the rag back. "From a disagreement in a different, less classy establishment."</p><p>Bellamy watches them both, silent and patient, an amused look around his eyes that doesn't reach his mouth. This sort of banter between them could go on for a while. But he's got time. Already the days are getting longer, the yellows rays of the sun through the windows, trapping dust motes, still so bright you'd never guess this was the waning of the day.</p><p>Eventually, Raven is distracted by a new arrival at the other end of the bar, and the two are left alone with their drinks and their companionable silence. A familiar silence. Bellamy knows that Murphy will break it first, though his own questions are more urgent. But he needs to come at them in his own way. Their plans have buried themselves too deeply in his brain, become the sort of thoughts that keep him up at night, until his mind wanders to the boundary where his ranch lands become desert lands, and the dangers that lurk out there in the barren wilds beneath the stars and moon. Those kinds of dangers he could live with. The kinds of dangers on the other side, he can't.</p><p>Murphy's got no patience in him and he doesn't care much for philosophizing about the wilderness or the plains or the impossible height of the sky. He's got his problems with men and they keep him busy enough. He's got his problems and he's learned to find solutions in his own two hands. Can't trust any farther than that, most of the time.</p><p>He sniffs, once, a sign that some thought's itching there at the back of his mind, can't be contained. Bellamy looks up at him and waits.</p><p>"Sorry I missed your wedding," Murphy says. The words come out fast, like he'd been thinking them over too long before he spoke.</p><p>"Most everyone did," Bellamy answers. He takes a drink after so not even Murphy can see him smile, listens to the dry, low way that Murphy laughs.</p><p>Murphy's more at ease now, tracing the indents at the bottom edge of his glass, watching their reflections in the mirror behind the bar. "Plus it was back... round about Easter, right?"</p><p>"Little bit before."</p><p>"Couldn't wait for your oldest friend to get out, I guess."</p><p>"Under the circumstances..." He meets Murphy's eye in the mirror. "No."</p><p>He twists the gold ring around his third finger, and for the first time, Murphy glances down and notices it's there. His eyes open wider for a brief moment. Then his usual, unbothered expression settles again across his face. Probably no one, he thinks, has seen it yet. No one ever sees what's right there in front of them, if it's not what they're expecting to see.</p><p>*</p><p>Arkadia hasn’t seen a drop of rain in thirty-two days. The asphalt on the highway shimmers with heat; the air crackles with heat; the heat rises, stifling and strong, from the parched dirt and the cracks in the pavement.</p><p>High stacks of white clouds drift slowly across the blue vault of the sky, the only movement on the scene as Mr. Shumway’s black sedan rushes down the main road out of town. He slows down when he gets within sight of the Blake Ranch, then swings into the last spot in the driveway, behind a beat-up blue truck and a fire-red Porsche. The slam of his car door scatters the crows gathered on the tree by the side of the house. They caw frightfully as they fly overhead, but Mr. Shumway pays them no mind.</p><p>He finds Bellamy Blake in the fields out back, urging his cattle back into their pen. Shumway has never had a ranch job himself. He’s worked for the Bank of Arkadia for fifteen years, most of that time as the right-hand man to Mr. Kane, which put him in a good spot to take on the manager's position himself upon Kane's passing. He let the post go to Diana Sydney instead. His current job suits him fine. Sometimes he even takes on what other people think of as the unpleasant business of in-person visits like these.</p><p>The conversation, he doesn't mind. The cattle unnerve him some.</p><p>He keeps his distance until Bellamy has locked the enclosure gate safely behind him, makes no move to come any closer but waits for Bellamy to walk around the fence and come to him.</p><p>"Mr. Shumway," Bellamy says, tipping his hat back from his face. A line of sweat gleams across the bridge of his nose and his cheeks. The address does not sound of a warm welcome, but there's no displeasure to it, either.</p><p>"Mr. Blake." He glances at the cattle again. They're still gathered too close for comfort. One pokes its head over the lowest bar of the enclosure and stares at Shumway with the patient, distant interest of a creature with nowhere else to go. "I think you know why I'm here."</p><p>Bellamy nods once. "I guess I probably do."</p><p>Rightfully so. They've had this conversation more than once before.</p><p>"The bank has been patient," Shumway says. "Generous, even. But we can't keep giving you extensions on your mortgage payments. We've provided too many already."</p><p>Bellamy tilts up his chin, and the shadow of his hat falls again over his face. He has a way of staring—Shumway always forgets, remembers only in the moments he feels himself caught in it again—that makes the object of the gaze feel just about as transparent as glass. A steady, critical stare.</p><p>"I'll get you the money," Bellamy says.</p><p>"When? Because if the answer isn't yesterday—"</p><p>"Soon."</p><p>Shumway's lips narrow into a thin line. "Mr. Blake," he says, even and uncompromising, his hands drawn to his hips, "if you don't have your overdue payments ready with your next payment by the end of the month, we'll foreclose on your property. We won't have any other choice."</p><p>He's staring right back at those unblinking eyes, so he doesn't miss the glare of anger in them, sharp and bright as a flash of sunlight against broken glass and gone as quickly. Seemed to hit at the word <em>choice</em> and not <em>foreclose</em>. But Bellamy doesn't answer, beyond that brief narrowing of his gaze, and after a moment Shumway takes his handkerchief from his pocket and wipes at the sweat on his face.</p><p>Damn hot day.</p><p>Bellamy looks down at their feet, toes his boot into the faded, trampled, dead grass. So pale and dry now that it can hardly be called green. The blades look sick and yellow when Shumway bothers to examine them up close.</p><p>"If it doesn't rain soon," Bellamy says, "this drought will bring my ranch bigger problems than your bank ever will."</p><p>Shumway smiles, thin and humorless, back at him. "I wouldn't underestimate this problem, Mr. Blake,” he answers.</p><p>And maybe, deep down, he feels some pleasure in that.</p><p>He turns to walk back to his car, but two steps out, he turns around again. "I noticed Clarke Griffin's car," he says, "out there in your driveway." He doesn’t add anything more, just lets the remark hang in the air between them. No more than a friendly observation. Of course he knows that Blake and Griffin have been close since they were kids. There was even a rumor they were going to get married, not long after they graduated high school, before Bellamy’s mama passed away and he started worked at the ranch full time. But Clarke was a respectable young woman then. Now she's a criminal, a criminal as surely as the prisoners at the Ark County Jail, as far as any decent people are concerned.</p><p>Bellamy nods again. "She's a free woman, Mr. Shumway," he says.</p><p>And that, Shumway must concede, is true.</p><p>*</p><p>Clarke is the best shot in three counties, by her own measure. She’s had a concealed-carry license since she was twenty-one. Her father first taught her how to handle a gun when she was ten years old, and she still owns the antique silver-plated pistol that’s been in the Griffin family since they moved out West in 1883.</p><p>Like Bellamy, Clarke relies on herself for as much as she can. He's always admired this self-sufficient side of her, even in its worst iterations: her stubbornness, arrogance, and pride. They are his worst sins, too. Looking back, he sees these traits as the stumbling blocks that they were: how they needed each other, but never could admit it or stand it, how they did everything they could to prove it wasn’t true.</p><p>After dinner, they head out back and set up a pyramid of tin cans so Clarke can get a bit of target practice in. That's what she calls it. Bellamy thinks she's probably just trying to show off, or else just calming her nerves a little. Either way, he doesn't mind. Watching Clarke shoot always riles something up in him. Seeing the square set of her shoulders and the steadiness in her frame, the tight-lipped expression on her face and the narrowness about her eyes, always brings back sharp-edged memories of tracing his fingers down her spine. He thinks of the way he used to run his knuckles down along her cheekbone, so gently that his skin barely touched her skin, and push stray strands of hair back behind her ear, and how she used to grab him by the belt loops with impatience, just at the ghost of his breath against her lips.</p><p>He thinks about that steadiness in her and how he used to break it down bit by bit, how he used to feel the wanting in her like a low, desperate thrum.</p><p>Clarke holds her pistol out with one hand and takes her time in aiming. Bellamy stands back and off to the side, watching her: the straightness of her arm, the slight uptilt of her chin.</p><p>She shoots, and the top can clatters off the apex of the pyramid with a high-pitched zing.</p><p>"Good shot," he says.</p><p>"Hmm." She draws her arm back, finger still lightly on the trigger, pistol pointed up. "That was nothing."</p><p>The sun has just started to set at this hour, bleeding out at the horizon in pinks and oranges and golds, skimming gold along the tips of the grass and the fence posts. Farther up, the light blue of the sky has deepened with oncoming twilight. But the air is still warm with a steady heat that will not break.</p><p>Clarke shoots out the next row of cans with two sharp shots, one after another, a short cacophony of high metallic rings. She squints briefly at the third line. Then she sends off another three bullets and knocks them out too, like she's bored now, like she's ready to be done.</p><p>"I haven't seen Octavia around much," she says, as Bellamy walks over to pick up the busted targets.</p><p>"Mmm. She's been spending most of her time at her girlfriend's." He sets the cans back up in the same pyramid again, though he knows Clarke has no intention of trying another round. "Practically lives over there."</p><p>Clarke makes a face. "In that piece of crap apartment? I know it came with the bar. But it's not much better than storage space."</p><p>"It's no Kane ranch house."</p><p>"You don't want them living here with you?"</p><p>She noticed the remark, he knows because she hesitated in the moment that Bellamy tried to meet her eye, but doesn't bite. Nor does he at her reply.</p><p>"You ready?" he asks instead.</p><p>Clarke nods. He asked her the same question on the night that they got married, and she looked at him then with the same pinched, determined expression on her face. Hardly the wedding they'd dreamed about when they were barely more than kids. Hardly the feeling he'd thought he'd have in the pit of his stomach, watching her sign the papers, aware of every bit of distance between them and every ounce of devotion, too.</p><p>"Why'd you do it?" he asks. Unlike most words that come out of his mouth, these surprise him. In the moment before he'd spoken, he'd been looking down at the clean, sharp bullet hole in the topmost can, not thinking about Marcus Kane or the will or the last visit he made out to the prison, talking in even tones with his fist balled up tight and hidden in his hand.</p><p>But the question comes anyway, all on its own, and he looks up in time to see a half-second of surprise transform Clarke's features.</p><p>"Because he deserved it," she says. Doesn't have to ask, of course, what Bellamy meant. "Trying to take your family's land from you."</p><p>Bellamy shakes his head. "That's not just him. Didn't solve any of my problems."</p><p>"Not the only reason I did it," Clarke counters, fast, then half-turns away before he can see the high color rising to her cheeks. "I knew him longer and better than you. He deserved it. That's all you need to know." </p><p>*</p><p>The truck pulls up outside the main branch of the Bank of Arkadia not long after opening, at 8:15 AM. Murphy keeps the engine running. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Clarke pulling her ski mask down over her face, tucking the last of her hair out of the way, and pulling the hood of her black sweatshirt up. Her clothes are so baggy that it's hard to tell if she's man or woman underneath.</p><p>He hands her a pair of gloves, then pulls his own on, too, and yanks his own mask down over his face.</p><p>He doesn't ask her if she's ready, because she's got no other choice now, and neither does he.</p><p>They jump out of the truck and slam the doors closed, two overlapping shots in the quiet Main Street morning. Keep their heads down. Murphy takes out the security camera outside with a single shot. There's another one inside, and he takes it out, too. Clarke has her own handgun drawn, and she aims it in a sweeping circle from one teller to the next, then across the line of three customers, letting each one know for just a moment what it feels like to be caught in her sights.</p><p>"Down on the ground!" Murphy yells, and the three customers drop. "Hands up!" he shouts, and the tellers slowly raise their hands into the air.</p><p>Murphy shoves his way past the prone bodies on the ground and demands all the money from the till, while Clarke prowls silently around the perimeter of the room. She tries to keep her eyes on everyone at once, her finger light against the trigger. Everything has slowed for her. Even her heart's become a sedate and heavy drumbeat in her chest. It drowns out Murphy's voice, which seems to echo from far away, like a soundtrack playing on a TV in another room—rough and angry and distant. Unfamiliar to her now. The sounds of money shoved into a duffel bag, of the scramble of bills and fabric and trembling hands, are all too fast and harsh to be of this silent, breathless scene in front of her.</p><p>If she took a shot now, she'd be able to watch the bullet itself ripple through the air.</p><p>"Go! Go! Go!" Murphy is shouting. She glances at him. He's trying to get the teller to move faster—</p><p>Out of the corner of Clarke's eye, a different movement shimmers. There and gone. She turns and points her gun at the third man on the ground, and he falls back down.</p><p>Murphy zips the bag closed and throws it over his shoulder, starts running toward the door. Clarke follows more slowly, swinging her arm across the scene, watching out for last minute heroes—time that seemed molasses-slow before now rushes much too fast—she almost misses the third man as he gets up on his knees again and draws his own gun—</p><p>Clarke turns on her heel and shoots without hesitation, hits him square in the shoulder and watches him fall down. Behind her, she hears Murphy yelling. A warning. As she whips around the other way, she reaches for the other weapon tucked into the waistband of her jeans—</p><p>For a long moment, she stands there in the middle of the bank, one gun trained on the man on the ground, the other on the teller with one hand under the counter, reaching for a weapon of her own.</p><p>"Hands up!" Murphy yells, and the teller reaches her shaking hands back into the air.</p><p>Clarke watches the blood seeping from the bullet wound in the man's shoulder, out into a puddle on the shining, clean white floor. This time, she feels exactly what she knows she's supposed to feel: sorrow and compassion, regret for the damage she's caused. Regret for the situation she’s in.</p><p>But she did what she had to. And now she's inching back toward the door.</p><p>She drops her arms and holsters her weapons only when she's outside again, back beneath the high, unfiltered morning sun. This time, she jumps behind the wheel, while Murphy holds the bag of cash with both arms and launches himself into the passenger's seat. "Thought you were a fucking good shot," he says, as she pulls out from the curb and slams her foot down on the gas—the car door's still partly open, and Murphy's feet are barely inside the truck, but she's got all she can handle just trying to stay in the right lane—and Clarke snarls at him and snaps:</p><p>"I am. You think I'm gonna kill a man just for trying to be a hero?"</p><p>"Right, course not." Murphy shoves the cash down under the seat and finally closes the door. He falls back, panting, against the seat. "Just for being a villain, right?"</p><p>Clarke rips her mask off her face and shoves her hood back down, then grips the wheel again so tightly that her knuckles turn as pale as bone. "Damn right," she says, and Murphy, so high on adrenaline and fear and power that he can't contain himself, laughs so loudly that even the coyotes in the desert can hear.</p><p>*</p><p>Sometimes when he can’t sleep, Bellamy lies awake and listens to the coyotes howling in the distance. Their plaintive wailing, their soft footsteps prowling closer. Above them all, those creatures and him, an inky purple sky littered with stars.</p><p>He knows the sound of them so well that he can almost hear it now, sitting out on his porch in the slow-simmering June heat in the middle of the day. Octavia is approaching down the main road. She's riding that damn horse again, as if they didn't have a perfectly good truck to get them into town and back. But he's given up complaining about it.</p><p>When she turns into the driveway and trots up to the porch, he nods at her. "Nice of you to stop by, O."</p><p>She rolls her eyes at him. "Still home, isn't it, big brother?" She climbs down and ties Helios to the far-right column of the porch, then leans against it herself, balancing on the lowest step with her arms crossed. After a moment, she sweeps her hat off so he can see the sun-freckles that are coming out now across her nose, almost like his, and the strands of hair sticking to her cheek in the heat, and she says, "I heard they found Kane's body."</p><p>Bellamy hums. "Took them long enough." He taps his can of beer absently with his finger. He’s been sipping at it for a while now, waiting for his sister to show up, so slowly that it’s still half full. Without warning, he reaches into the cooler next to him and tosses one to Octavia, too.</p><p>She catches it easily and flicks open the tab. "Well I guess they never looked in his own bed, did they? I heard about the rest of it, too. When were you going to tell me you got married, huh?"</p><p>"It was a sudden decision," he lies. More like, not the sort of trouble he wants his little sister wrapped up in. "Anyway, you didn't miss much." He holds up his left hand, with the dulled golden band on the third finger. “It’s not going to stick.” As Octavia watches, he wriggles the ring off and sets it down with a light clink on the card table to his left. That table, she thinks, still sitting out there, prey to the elements, though they haven't played a round of cards out on the porch since before their mama died.</p><p>Octavia raises her eyebrows. She watches him steadily over the top of her drink. "Thought if it ever stuck with anyone, it would be with her."</p><p>Bellamy shrugs. He's settled into his long-gaze now, the kind that can see right past her, right through her, and all the way to the horizon line. "She and Murphy have already left town."</p><p>"Not surprised," Octavia huffs. "Diyoza already likes them for that robbery at the bank." And then, to prove she's not as easily fooled as he might think, "She'll trace that suitcase money to them before too long."</p><p>"Not the way Murphy laundered it." He shows no surprise that she knows as much as she does, only sets his drink down and keeps staring at the place where the road curves away and disappears among the fields. "They won't find the car, either. That's long gone."</p><p>"Hmmmm. Another thing, you know—another funny thing is I saw that will." Her own eyes narrow, as she taps her finger against the side of the can and lets the hollow, metallic drumbeat of it sit, taking up space in the silence. "It's not Wells Jaha's handwriting. And he's the only lawyer in town."</p><p>Bellamy shrugs again. "I guess Kane went to Polis with it."</p><p>"I guess he went to Raven." Like she wouldn't recognize that hand, from notes left on the kitchen counter, from letters, from grocery lists. "She's already packing up to move into the ranch house. She's going to ramble around that old thing."</p><p>"You're going to," Bellamy corrects.</p><p>"Only thing I don't get," Octavia continues, as if she didn't hear, "is why you went to all that trouble. Robbing the bank and all. Seems a lot of complication when you could have just cleared out his accounts or sold the house."</p><p>Bellamy doesn't answer for a long moment, and when he does, she can read, in the awkward squareness of his shoulders and the way he glances down at his knees, how much he hates telling half-truths to her. "He's not as rich as you'd think," he says at last. "And we had a lot of debt. Plus, Clarke took some of the money. More hers than mine anyway, and she needed it." He takes another drink. "Start that new life."</p><p>"You could have gone with her," Octavia answers without thinking. If he saved the ranch for her, he wasted his money and his time, got himself mixed up in all this trouble for nothing in the end. She doesn't need it and, though she’s not quite made up her mind yet, she probably won't stay. And he's always loved Clarke Griffin, with that slow-burning, smoldering-fire kind of feeling, for as long as Octavia can remember, covered the flame up with ashes for a while but never fully put it out.</p><p>"You could have just let the bank take the land," she adds. "Gotten yourself some of that new life, too."</p><p>Bellamy shakes his head. His mouth is shut tight in a thin, set line; how much he's holding back, not even Octavia can tell. "They wanted to leave," he says, after a long pause. "And I wanted to stay."</p><p>Only then does Octavia notice that she's been leaning in over the porch step, trying to reach him, trying to discern something on his face or in the angle of his body that would give her some real answers at last. She's used to knowing her brother better than she knows herself. Through her wild years, through her confusion, he's been as steady and reliable as the old ranch land itself, as quiet as the edge of town in the evenings when not a single car passes by on the main road, as predictable as the slow-passing months of every year building upon year. When she didn't know what she wanted or who she was, at least she knew him, and what he wanted, and what he was.</p><p>But now she finds that she can't reach him, any more than Clarke or Murphy could. They didn't come to him, she realizes. He must have brought the plan to them. And they did him one last favor because it was all that they could do.</p><p>Up above them, the pale blue of the sky has started to darken, heavy multitudes of rain clouds rolling in with unsettling speed. In a few minutes, an early nightfall will come upon them. Then the thick darkness above will open up at last.</p><p>Why he did it, really, she may never know. Was it as simple as he claims: that he needed the money, that he wanted to stay? Or was he angry and grasping for revenge, ranting and raving at the one faceless evil in his life that he could touch? Maybe he couldn't bring these storm clouds in to quench the long drought, can't control the weather or the heat or the way the desert is always trying to encroach—but he could bring that bank, for a moment, to its knees. He's lived his whole life trying to tame this land and he's come up with so little for it. Until now.</p><p>She can't understand his loyalty to it. No more than loyalty to their mother, perhaps, or to the Blake family name, or just to history and tradition and the idea of their little home, persisting as it does year after year. Maybe he really does love it, as he sometimes claims he does. Maybe he really wants the wife that Clarke could never be and the kids that she'd never have. Maybe this is a gift to Octavia, too, so she can have a life of her own, and so he can raise his own family here in the home their great-grandfather built.</p><p>She could ask herself these questions from now into eternity, and she'll never really know.</p><p>Out over the fields, a dry flash of lightning cracks across the sky. Two more follow—quick, sharp glints against the darkness—and the last of the sun is swallowed up behind the gathering clouds.</p><p>Helios stamps his foot and whinnies. Octavia reaches back on instinct to take his reigns. "I should bring him in," she says.</p><p>"Sounds like a good idea," Bellamy answers. He stands up and kicks the cooler closed, looks out beneath the overhang of the porch and to the heavens. "I think we're in for a pretty bad storm,” he declares.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you for reading!</p><p>You can find a moodboard for this fic on my tumblr <a href="https://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/post/642575267297099776/mountain-lion-mean-bellamy-clarke-murphy-past">@kinetic-elaboration</a>. I also jotted down some notes on my writing process for this fic, which you can read <a href="https://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/post/642620273588420608/february-8-mountain-lion-mean-notes">here</a> if you are so inclined.</p><p>..Did this fic include some hidden/implied Clurphy? Up to you to decide.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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